Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 12:06:29 +0100
From: Mike Arram <marram@wanadoo.co.uk>
Subject: Terry and the Peachers

This story follows on from an earlier Nifty story published on the College
site -- 'The Decent Inn'.  It follows up on some of the loose ends and some
of the marginal characters in the earlier story, as well as continuing the
story of the rocky romance of Matthew White and Andy Peacher, and the story
of their friend Paul Oscott.  The institutions named in it are (almost) all
imaginary.  Matthew's home university is in an entirely fictional
university city in England somewhere between Reading and Swindon and its
resemblances to any real university are simply generic.  The persons
described in the story are also fictitious and bear no resemblance to any
living person.

The story contains graphic depictions of sex, mostly between young males.
If the reading or possessing of such material as this is illegal in your
place of residence please leave this site immediately and do not proceed
further.  If you are under the legal age to read this, please do not do so.



TERRY AND THE PEACHERS

by

Michael Arram


I


Terry O'Brien turned nervously into Finkle Road, pulled his baseball cap
low over his eyes and started counting the houses.  He got over on to the
side with the odd numbers.  Finkle Road had been sadly altered by the
nearby university.  Terry was a native of the city, and he remembered when
it had been an ordinary road with families and kids.  But the expansion in
higher education had its effect.  From five thousand students, the
university had grown in ten years to fifteen thousand.  Spreading from the
east, one by one, houses had been rented to students or snapped up by the
university accommodation service.  Those residents who found themselves
surrounded by students soon found reasons to sell up and get out.  Terry
knew why.  Students were as different from each other as anybody else, but
most of them did like a drink and a good time, and some of them had no self
control.  Also they were young and their parents were no longer there to
tell them to keep the noise down.  People in Finkle Road soon got fed up
with dark figures throwing up over their garden wall, their wheelie bins
set alight and the unrelenting dull thump of the bass beat of a stereo at
maximum volume through the wall at two in the morning.  Also, a lot of
residents did not like the fact that the university's expansion drew in
many new students with yellow or brown skins.  A BNP candidate had nearly
been elected for the Northside council ward last year.
   Terry was nineteen, and he was not a student.  He had achieved his
mediocre A levels the previous year, but he had not applied for a degree
course.  He couldn't raise the enthusiasm.  He knew he was bright, but he
also knew that he didn't get much of a buzz from study for its own sake.
He told his parents he wanted to take a year to think about his future.
They weren't too happy, but they didn't complain too loudly.  Like him,
they lived uncomfortably close to Finkle Road and, like him, they had
learned to faintly resent what the university was doing to their
neighbourhood.  'Student' was a word that was rarely used with approval in
the O'Brien household, especially as his father was a police inspector who
frequently dealt with the student population in its least attractive moods.
  Then there was the other reason for the hiatus.  Terry was gay.  He had
been perfectly open about it to his parents since he was sixteen, and they
had reluctantly conceded the point.  His mother had even got to the point
of getting interested in talking about possible boyfriends - not that he
showed any sign of settling down, and his mother would have found it hard
to believe some of the things he had got up to since he came out.
  He had been open about his orientation in the sixth form of his Catholic
comprehensive, and no one had been too surprised when he came out.  To
begin with, Terry had been a keen dancer since he had been a small boy.
This by no means meant that Terry was gay, but dancing was not what his
mates did.  It made him different.  It also left him with a languid grace
and quick movements which brought him close to the edge of effeminacy, and
with his mobile face, his slightly drawling voice and his air of being
always on display, no one was at all surprised when Terry confirmed he was
gay.
  Coming out had led to one or two difficult moments, but somehow Terry got
away with it.  For all his affectations, his multiple ear piercings and his
drawl, he was a genuine and friendly sort, full of humour, and his avowedly
hetero friends had stuck by him loyally.  For he was popular despite being
so obviously different.  A lot of it was because in Year 10 he had been the
star of a blinding school production of Peter Pan which had even been
reviewed in the national press when the teacher in charge took it to a
student drama festival.  His supple dancer's body, his preternatural self-
possession, his elfin, amused face, his thick blond curls and contrasting
black eyebrows had made him into a stunning fifteen-year-old Peter; all he
had needed was a pair of pointy ears.  So he had become a school hero, a
status he had never lost even though he had come out.  People just
shrugged.  Terry had always been different.
   There was talk of auditions at the Royal School of Dance.  But Terry
turned out to be a Lost Boy in more than just the theatrical sense.  He
could not motivate himself, and would not be motivated.  Local YMCA shows,
tutoring ladies' disco fitness groups, and support roles at the ballet
group were the limit of his modest ambition.  His female friends -- of whom
he had quite a few - and his dance teachers could only throw their hands
up; he was worth so much more.
  It was because of one particular old school friend that he was walking
down Finkle Road that dull February morning.  The unrequited love of his
schoolboy years had been his oldest friend, Paul Oscott.  Paul had then
lived a few doors down from his family home, but he had lived a very
different life from Terry.  Paul's father had died of cancer when he was
twelve, after a long and painful illness.  It had destroyed Paul's
childhood and unhinged his mother.  Home for Paul became a battleground and
a place of squalor.  What was worse was that Paul had many of the gifts
Terry had not got: he was intellectually alert, focused and committed.
Yet, different though they were they had been friends since Sunday school
in their church of St Francis, and, although Paul was a year above Terry in
school, they had been inseparable for many years.  In Paul's teens, he had
frequently had to take refuge in Terry's bedroom from the rage and abuse of
his mother.
  It was on sleepovers with Paul that Terry had begun fully to realise his
difference from other boys.  Paul was not a particularly good-looking boy,
he was thin and gawky, but he had assurance, a quick wit and a kind, open
face and Terry had gradually and tragically fallen in love with him.  At
last, one night when they were fourteen and fifteen, it had got to the
point where mutual dares had got the two of them naked together on Terry's
bed.  Kneeling between Paul's splayed legs Terry had taken his thin member
in his hand and his own had sprung to full erection.  With Paul staring at
him but not drawing away, and breathing hard, Terry had slowly masturbated
his friend, his own cock straining.  He still dreamed of those ecstatic
moments, his hand cupping Paul's dark and hairless balls, and then stroking
up the narrow length of his penis, the foreskin opening and closing on its
long purple head, the clear precum glistening as it leaked out of Paul's
slit.  As he was walking, Terry's cock enlarged and stiffened at the
recollection of it.  Then came the moment when Paul had moaned and lifted
himself off the bed as his ejaculation had spattered his belly and his thin
pubic hair with creamy gobbets.
  Terry knew from then on what he was.  Paul had offered nervously to
return Terry's attentions, but Terry wouldn't let him that night.  He had
cleaned his friend up, and leaned in to kiss his mouth, but Paul couldn't
go that far, and turned his head.  Still, from time to time, Paul had not
resisted Terry's earnest suggestions of sex play.  Paul had masturbated
him, and on one glorious occasion had sucked his cock, but mostly Terry had
serviced Paul.  He had become devoted to stimulating Paul's genitals, his
mouth had become familiar with every square centimetre of his friend's
crotch, and Paul always became very excited if his tongue strayed below his
testicles.  But as the years passed they both realised that Paul may have
had bisexual leanings, but he was definitely not gay.
  Slowly their teenage sex play became different for both of them.  Paul
sadly admitted to Terry that he felt guilty for using him, that when his
lips were wrapped around his cock, he often came only because he was
fantasising that he was inside a woman.  And Terry gloomily came to the
conclusion that he was entirely in love with his geeky but so very kind and
so very clever friend.  It was a love which could not be returned, as they
both grew to know.  But still there was the sex.  Terry needed it, and Paul
went along with it for several reasons.  Paul may not have loved Terry
then, but Terry was at least dear to him, and, to be honest with himself,
the release of sex was always welcome.
  When Paul had just turned seventeen, after a terrible day for Paul at
home, they had spent one last night together and, desperate for love and
desperated to be loved, Paul had entered Terry's anus and for once made
full love to his friend.  Paul had woken in the night to find Terry shaking
with tears beside him.  He had taken him in his arms, and for the first and
only time as a boy, deeply kissed and lovingly embraced him, wiping away
his tears and whispering tenderly into his ear.  Terry had clung to him,
feeling now for the first time what it was really like to be held in a
lover's arms.  It had never happened since.  Not long afterwards, Paul had
run away from his home, and made a new life.  He had found a refuge,
ironically, in a student house, and there he had found purpose and
direction, and new horizons.
  Terry lost what little connection he had with Paul Oscott when he had
gone on to university: something he had done against all the odds.  But
Terry had decided that from then on there would be no lies in his life.  He
came out to his parents and friends.  Paul had supported him while he was
still in school, and his other friends had rallied round.  The school
chaplain too had been a tower of strength, and it had all gone far better
than he had a right to expect.  But he had found no new love.  If there had
been other gay boys in his year, they kept themselves to themselves.
  Terry had drifted into what night life his small university city offered.
He even got a job clearing tables in the local gay pub in the back streets
of the city centre, the King's Cross.  He got friendly with a lot of the
customers, but he was known there as untouchable.  Frank, the manager,
would not allow his bar workers to get into relationships on the premises
and he had a wicked way with his tongue.  He was protective of Terry, for
Terry had grown into the unconventionally handsome young man he had always
promised to be: thick and curling golden hair, usually gelled-up in spikes,
a pointed face lit up by fascinating, laughing hazel eyes.  Like his Paul,
he was on the slim side, but was not so tall as to become gawky, as Paul
had.  He still had all his boyish quickness and grace, and now it was
combined with a young man's strength.
   Terry had not found love, but he had found plenty of partners.  A
particularly passionate recent affair with a trans-gender boy his own age
had been the most extreme example so far of his desire to be outside
society's boundaries.  He liked to shock.  In some of his more
exhibitionist moods there was no doubt, even to the most unobservant, that
Terry was a young gay and very proud of it.  He had really admired his
boyfriend Anthony as a free spirit, apart from his tendency to a funny but
wearying bitchiness.  For Anthony, the world was there to mock; he expected
no kindness from it and he gave it no quarter.  Terry had listed him in his
personal sexual diary (which he liked to call "The Anals of Terry") as
'Anthony the Acid'.  It had all ended in a glorious row, in which Terry had
been abused in terms of such vituperative power that he had left Anthony
admiring rather than hurt.  But Terry was not like Anthony; he had too much
generosity of spirit, too much love to give.
   Today, for the first time in well over a year, that generosity had
impelled Terry to go and seek Paul.  He had laid aside his tight tee
shirts, his multiple earings, bracelets and thick thumb rings.  He had
dressed down to what his less fashionable contemporaries wore, ball cap,
bright white trainers and baggy tracksuit.  Apart from his litheness of
movement and quickness of eye, you might have thought he was a typical
townie, because Terry was quite a gifted actor.  He had even suppressed his
usual physical grace to adopt the chav's macho swagger.
  He was checking the doors down through the thirties and counting down to
Paul's number, 25.  Finally he found it.  No. 25 was a terraced house,
noticeably smarter than its neighbours.  A professional builder had spent a
lot of time replacing windows and cleaning up the stone façade and bay
window; new curtains and a freshly tiled path added to the effect.  The
builder seemed still to be working on the place; at least a skip was
outside the house, full of rubbish and uprooted bushes.  He rang the bell;
two minutes later he rang it again, and then again.  He leaned into the
patterned and frosted glass to see if he could see anyone moving inside.
Finally he glimpsed a dark figure moving and he rang again.  This time the
door opened and it was Paul.  He looked surprised, but recovered and
grinned in his familiar and quirky way.  He greeted his old friend with the
old warmth, 'Hiya, Tel.  Wassup?  How long you been here?  When did you
join the townie gangs?  You in the BNP now?'
  'I bin ringin' the bell for two fuckin' hours, Paulie.'
  'Two hours eh?  Odd, 'cos I went out an hour ago to get some milk and
there was no one here. Sorry, I was out the back working in the garden.
Come in and I'll show you the place.'  Terry walked into the hall.  A lot
of money had been spent on tidying the house, with new carpets, fresh paint
and plaster work.  It all smelled very fresh and clean.  There were smart
modern prints on the walls and expensive light fittings.  Paul led him down
the well-lit hall passage into the back kitchen, full of pine, glass and
steel.  Everything was clean, neat and tidy.
  'OK place this, me mate,' Terry said approvingly.  'You fallen on yer
feet.'
  'Yup,' Paul agreed.  'What's more, it doesn't cost me a bean, I just have
to manage it for the owner, and he lives up in Northampton, so he's not on
me back much.'  Terry noted how Paul's local accent had evaporated away in
eighteen months at university.  It made him a little uneasy.  In fact there
were other things about Paul that made him uneasy.  He had grown in ways
other than physical.  He was self-evidently and unselfconsciously cool.  He
had become a man, and, for all his wild life, Terry felt uncomfortably like
a boy next to him.  There were other indications of change in Paul's
circumstances.  It was winter, but Paul was tanned in the face and arms,
while his glasses and clothes were foreign-looking and clearly very
expensive.  Terry wondered where the money had come from.
  Paul made them a tea, and found sugar for Terry's cup.  He gave him a
tour of the garden.  Great work was in progress.  It had been cleared and
turf rolls were stacked ready against a new timber fence.  Paul had lately
been laying a patio at the end of the garden.  Bricks for an ambitious
barbecue pit had been stacked up.  A border had already been bedded in and
planted.  Paul surveyed it as proudly as if he were the lord of a manor.
  'Come on into me room; the other lads'll be back soon.'  They took their
mugs upstairs into one of the front rooms, the one with the bay window.
Terry sat in the window seat.  The room was fitted up as a study bedroom,
with a modern desk, on which was a laptop displaying as wallpaper the face
of a very good-looking brunette with a wide smile.
  Paul laughed as Terry noticed it, 'That's me girl ... me Rachel.'  There
were other pictures of the same dark woman around the room, and on the
bedside table, there she was pictured again, this time with two young men,
all laughing into the camera in ski gear, their arms round each other's
shoulders.
  Terry recognised the men, as he could hardly fail to do, for theirs were
not obscure faces.  One, a boyish-looking blond with faint freckles and an
impish, lively grin, was Andrew Peacher, eldest son of one of the richest
men in the world, and on the other side of Rachel was the even more famous
face of his partner, Matthew White, reckoned by the celeb mags to be high
in the top ten of the most beautiful men in the western world.  The rumour
was that he'd just signed a huge modelling contract with a major
international fashion house.  But Terry could hardly avoid knowing them,
because they had taken Paul into 25 Finkle Road three years before, given
him a home and had helped him into the university they were then attending.
Then later there had been a tabloid scandal, and Andy had been hounded out
of England by a remorseless press persecution.  After that Terry had lost
track of Andy and Matt, but magazines and supplements that had come his way
told him they were now living in the United States.  He had seen an article
on them before Christmas in a gay mag he bought.  It had got up his nose.
It made them seem remote, smug and spoilt in their big Californian mansion
with its pool and its chandeliers.  He had decided to despise them on
principle.
  Paul followed his gaze, 'You remember Andy and Matt, don't you?'
  'As if I could forget all that fuss when you wuz in the upper sixth,
Paulie.  You couldn't get down Finkle Road 'cos of the reporters.  And you
wuz in the thick of it and lovin' every second of it too.'
  Paul winced a little.  'It wasn't fun.  The bastards crucified little
Andy, and it broke poor Matt's heart when he ran for it.  No it wasn't fun,
believe me.'
  'No offence, Paulie.  I know they wuz good to you and all.  So you still
see them then?'
  'Er yes ... yes I do,' he went off into an abstracted moment before
refocusing on Terry. 'I'm glad you came round, Tel.  But something tells me
that you're not just here for a social call, am I right?'
  'So no small talk then, eh Paulie?  No "how's yer mum and dad?" or
"seein' anyone regular nowadays?" OK then, cut to the chase it is, me mate.
Iss been quite a while since I seen you, hasn't it?  I've not been doin'
much to tell the truth.  I've had the odd one-nighter; fact is I go lookin'
for 'em.  But thass why I'm here really, 'cos I had a one-nighter last week
thass been sort of preyin' on me mind like.'  Paul was frowning, but he
didn't interrupt.
  'It wen' like this.  I met a guy, an older guy, in the Queen's 'bout
three months ago.  You know .. the King's Cross, what the students call the
Queen's Cruise.  Well Frank in the Queen's don't allow bar help to pick up
followers.  Says it annoys him and gives the place a reputation.  Can you
believe that?  Anyway this guy was not a local; sounded like a Londoner to
me, not that I'm very good wiv accents like.  But we chatted over the bar,
and he tried to hit on me, before Frank came up and made some of his
cuttin' comments to both of us.  He said his name wuz Johnny, which I
suppose it might have bin.
  I didn't see him again till last week, when he wuz in again wiv another
bloke, who he called Laurie.  Johnny got very friendly, and I quite liked
him.  He was sort of rough looking, but wiv a nice smile and very polite
too.  And when I was in the toilet he came in and suggested we meet up
after closing time.  So I did, and we went to a club, the Bentinck, you
know it?  Quite a few gays go there.  After that he and his mate Laurie
suggested we go back to his hotel, and to cut a long story short, we made
out pretty energetically.'  Terry looked under his long dark lashes at
Paul, 'I always wanted to take two blokes at both ends at the same time,
and I let 'em spit-roast me.  Johnny was pretty rugged, but it wuz OK, I
guess.  Then they swopped round.'
  Paul shifted in his seat, but looked impassive.  Terry had hoped for more
of a reaction.  He continued, 'I slept wiv Johnny.  He wuz quite a stud,
and I found him on his way up me arse in the mornin' too when I woke up.
Pissed me off a bit, as he hadn't put a condom on, so I made him take it
out, which he did.  But I let him talk me into a BJ.  It was while I had my
mouth round his cock and he was playing with me curls that his mobile went
off, an' he pissed me off some more by startin' a fuckin' business meetin'
while I was working like a good un on his dick; up an' down like a
hydraulic pump I wuz.  Made me feel quite unappreciated.  You know how I
take pride in me performance in oral sex, don' you Paulie.'
  Paul smiled, but kept silent.
  Terry shrugged, 'So there I was blowin' him off like a professional and
there he was treatin' me like a street tart.  It wasn' as if he was payin'
me at all.  I'd gone off him by then, believe me Paulie.  But he said
somethink that took me mind off me grudge.  He mentioned the name of Paul
Oscott.'
  Paul snapped his full attention on Terry, and leaned forward in his
chair, 'Me?  He mentioned me?'
  'Yup.  I nearly bit his dick in half.  He screeched and smacked me hard
round the head, the bastard.  So I got off him and grabbed me clothes.  He
was sort of apologising by the time I was heading for the door.  But I went
without a word.  I don't put up with abuse.  I was shaken too.  I realised
that when I discovered I was stark naked in the corridor wiv me clothes
under me arm, with this family lookin' at me in total shock.'
  Paul's smile grew a bit broader.  He took off his glasses and polished
them.  'OK Tel, so there you were in a hotel bedroom sucking off this guy
who mentioned me in the course of a phone conversation.  Can you remember
what else he was talking about?'
  'Not a lot me mate, sorry.  When it started I was so annoyed I just
blocked him out.  But I heard him talk about Finkle Road, and that must
have pulled me back to what he was saying.  Somethink like "I'll get to
work.  I got the name ... Paul Oscott, and it's no. 25."  Then I clenched
me jaws, he got some of me teeth, and Johnny boy leaped six feet from a
sittin' position.  Now you tell me somethink.  Why would this hard bloke
from London be interested in Paul Oscott, eh?  'Cos it seems to me that he
was plannin' on surveillance.'
  Paul shook his head, 'I really got no idea, Tel.'
  Terry raised an eyebrow, 'Well you might not, Paulie, but if you ask me,
it's all wrapped up in Andy and Matt innit?  This guy's one of those
tabloid hacks, I'd bet, after more dirt on yer mates.'
  Paul shrugged, 'As an idea it'd be more convincing if Andy and Matt still
lived here.  But this is their old room.  They left Finkle Road for good
last October, and they aren't ever coming back.'
  'Maybe Johnny's bosses don' know that yet.'
  'Maybe.  They'll soon find out though.'  The front door opened and the
hall filled with male voices.  Steps thumped up the stairs, and the noise
of clinking and banging came from the kitchen.  A voice shouted up to Paul,
asking if he was in.  Paul replied, but otherwise sat there brooding.
Terry looked at him, remembering that same look on Paul's face when they
had lain together in his bed when they were teenage lovers.  The ache for
Paul was still in his heart.  He knew he would never lose it.  Although he
did not know it, his handsome face too was brooding, and Paul could read
more of what Terry was feeling than he realised.  Abruptly he leaned
forward from his desk chair and took Terry's hand.
  'You're a good mate, Tel.  It can't have been easy coming here after all
this time, but I really am glad that you did.  I've missed you.  I really
have.'
  Terry gave a pale smile.  'Yeah Paul, but we both know that I've missed
you more, and for different reasons.  Don' have to spell it out do I?'
  Paul gripped his hand tighter.  'Which makes what you've done by coming
here all the more generous.  I'm sorry you've not been able to move on.'
  'Yeah well don' say much for me do it?  I'm a sad bastard, one fuck and
I'm yours for ever.'
  'It was a good fuck, though.'
  'Yeah it was, wasn' it.  Never had a better.  Tell me Paulie, what did
you feel when we wuz doin' it together, I think I gotta right to ask you
that.'
  Paul looked at his old friend thoughtfully, 'It was good, Tel, better
than good.  You're an artist with your tongue and you're also a delight to
look at naked.  But it was sex ... good sex, but only sex.  I was using
you, and Tel, you deserve so much more than that.'
  Terry looked at him for a while, 'Thass not quite true, is it?'  It was a
statement.  Paul looked momentarily disconcerted.
  'Why did you say that?'
  'Cos that last night there wuz more than just sweat and semen involved.
I know, I felt it.  You din' have to screw me or kiss me the way you did
that last time, but you did.  So why?'
  Paul took his hand from Terry's and took his time about replying.  'Is it
love when I feel so sorry for someone's unhappiness that I'm willing to do
anything for him?'
  Terry snapped back, 'I'd say it wuz, Paulie.'  But he softened
immediately, 'Well, a sort of love anyway. Certainly more than anyone else
has ever giv'n me.'
  Paul said, 'Then let's leave it at that.  You know I care for you a lot,
Tel.  You're my best and oldest, you were also my first.  I won't say that
our sleeping together was nothing, because you meant ... mean a lot to me.
For a long time you kept me sane and gave me a lot of affection and
support, and I really owe you for that.  But I've shared my bed with other
people since.  And one of them at least is very special to me.  Your prince
will come, Tel.  I got some experience on this.  You're a lovely bloke when
people get past the big act. There is someone out there for you, and you'll
meet him.  I could tell you 'bout some friends of mine called Alex and Ben
...'
  'Save it, Paulie.  I'm glad we had this talk.  Iss cleared up a lot of
things.  Can we go on seein' each other?'
  'There's nothing I'd like better.  I owe you so much, Tel.  A lot more
maybe than you owe me.  You're about the closest thing I have to family.'
He paused, 'But in any case, there's more reasons now that we have to see
each other, a lot more.  This thing you walked into isn't going to go away,
and I'm going to need your help, if you're willing.  But it'll be anything
but safe.'